Tommy Blogs (retired)

Woo-hoo! Ben’s back

I’ve been checking the Making Pictures page at RawWorkflow.com almost every day since September. I had started to give up, but today I checked and there’s a new entry.

As usual, it’s long, erudite, and filled with examples and I’ll have to revisit it several times to start to learn from it.

I’m a bit sad to see the organization of the articles change from the month they were published to a sequential series of numbers. I could be overly optimistic and hope that means Ben will be writing more often, but I suspect it means he no longer expects to publish once a month.

Ah well. I still get insights from the very first column every time I go back to it. And the two entries on the importance of the frame and shapes formed around the border of the photo have been very helpful.

My problem with instant replay: fumbles

Brian points out that he doesn’t like instant replay in the comments on my post about NFL game officials’ salaries. I think that, overall, replay has been good for the game.

But there’s one area that’s abused: fumbles.

Once a play on the field has been whistled dead — when the official blows the whistle to end the play — it doesn’t matter what happens after that. Instant replay can’t change it.

This is often a problem with fumbles. An official doesn’t see the fumble from his angle and blows the play dead before the ball is recovered. Was it a fumble or not? We see the replay on TV and — look at that — it was a fumble. Too bad: it was whistled dead on the field. Fans, players, and coaches complain about how the officials stole the game from them.

To guard against this, the officials are letting plays where there might be a fumble go on without blowing the whistle. Even if they think the ball carrier was down before the ball came out, they’ll let the play continue and then count on instant replay to sort it out.

There’s a big problem with that: except in the last two minutes of a half, a play only gets reviewed if a coach throws the red challenge flag. And coaches don’t have unlimited challenges. In fact, they get a maximum of two per half. And if they use a challenge and the ruling on the field isn’t change (in other words, the coach was wrong), they not only lose one of their team’s timeouts for that half, they have no more challenges to use that half either.

This approach to fumbles is screwing with the balance of the game by shifting it towards the defense. The biggest problem is a resistance to calling runners down by contact: that’s a huge benefit for the defenders. But the inevitable officials’ huddle and any challenge or review gives a tired defense a chance to rest and an offensive team that had been in a groove a chance to get out of sync.

If you want better officiating, pay the referees more

Know how much NFL referees make? Think it’s anything like the salaries of the players or the coaches?

It’s between $25,000 and $70,000 a year.

The NFL considers them part-time employees. Have a look at Ed Hochuli’s schedule and see if you agree. You probably recognize Ed Hochuli — he’s the referee with arms as big as the players’.

There’s a lot more than officiating to blame for the Seahawks loss

You’re a friend, Brian, but there was a lot more to the Seahawks loss than the referees. The field goal kicker missed two fields goals. Jerramy Stevens dropped at least three catchable passes. Whoever had the outside containment responsibility for the quarterback did a terrible job: didn’t Ben Roethlisberger rush for three first downs? And what about the clock mismanagement at the end of the first half and the end of the game?

Neither team played well — their performances in their respective conference championship games was at a whole other level.

But the Seahawks didn’t lose because the officiating was bad.

Compact Flash prices taking a nosedive

If you’ve been looking for some Ultra II or Extreme III cards, now’s the time. 2GB Ultra II cards are under $100. Wow.

Dawn at Newport Bay

Dawn at Newport Bay

Putting away the Christmas decorations

Putting away the Christmas decorations

Playing around with Panorama Factory 4.2. It’s pretty impressive, particularly since this was done with its auto settings and in very close quarters. I don’t have a special panoramic head to rotate about the lens’s nodal point, either. In fact, I was using a travel tripod and I had to rotate the tripod itself. So very impressive results for auto.

There’s a tiny bit of ghosting that you can’t see at this size (the full-size image is nearly 8000 pixels across and made from 3 photos from my 20D) since Dawn moved into the edge of the frame of one of the shots. But the software handled that glitch very well.

More from Bill Jay about the value of photographing regularly

Billie and I seem to be operating on a similar wavelength. As she points out, simply taking photos regularly, with no guiding purpose, will produce random results. She’s referring to my post where I commit to taking at least one photo every day.

She finds both confirmation and a warning about the idea from Bill Jay, the editor of “LensWork” magazine. In the November-December 2005 issue, I found more from Bill Jay in the EndNotes about photographing regularly:

If there is a single factor which separates the best photographers from wannabes it is the quantity of images which they produce. They seem to be forever shooting. I have watched many of them as they take picture after picture even when they are not photographing. They shoot place names and street signs as location reminders; long-shots to set the scene; people, places, and things as remembrances of atmosphere.

 Billie is right about the value of being deliberate. For me, though, at least for now, I am going to get value simply from the discipline of shooting regularly. As a secondary goal, I hope to learn more about why I take photos. But my primary goal is just to take a photo every day.

Alex Barnett at the January East Side Weblog Meetup

Alex Barnett

Alex tells us about the Del.icio.us Lesson, an idea from Joshua Porter.
January East Side Weblog Meetup, Crossroads Mall, Bellevue

We had a good turnout at the January East Side Weblog Meetup. Anita and Jack were there, of course, with Grandson R—. I had some good discussions with Alex Barnett about microformats and the value of tagging. Dean Scott attended his first meetup from a long way away. It was good to meet Dean. Jack helped him with some HTML. Julie Leung arrived about the time that I was leaving.

Flickr: just like the gym

Flickr has been having server troubles the last couple of days. There’s currently a header at the top of the pages that asks, “Is Flickr acting weird for you?” and explains that the servers are running “hot.”

Gyms see huge crowds in January as people try to stick to their resolutions to get in shape. I suspect that photo sharing sites are going to have the same kinds of problems every January as people play with their new digital cameras.

At least Flickr can add servers more easily than gyms can add treadmills….